My goodness! I missed a whole year of Helix and didn't even notice? That IS embarrassing. Well, just judging from the second season, the floating research lab seems to be following an Odyssey-type path, with stops with lotus-eaters and the like.

The name Timothy Omundson rang a bell, kind of, so I looked him up and he turned out to be this guy:

I've seen him in a dozen shows at least, and his biggest role was probably in Psych. But I didn't recognize him behind the beard as King Richard in Galavant, and I didn't know he could sing. Nice surprise!

And now it's over, with Helena now established as a more amiable psychopath and superefficient killer. The final episode of the season had a Dickensian family gathering that was as pleasing as it was unexpected.

I'm still watching Defiance, although I'm of two minds about the show. More care and attention goes into the making of each episode than in some movies I've seen lately (I'm thinking Ex Machina). Defiance has a nice variety of idiosyncratic characters, good dialogue, excellent production values. But it is so very violent; people drop like flies in that show. The last episode alone had seven killings, unless the grizzled, rather nasty grandmother (surprisingly played by Linda Hamilton) somehow manages to survive. I don't know quite what to make of it.

Post-apocalptic stories are all like Survivor, or vice versa, rather. You protect yourself by eliminating others. I haven't been keeping up with Defiance, but I did see the last episode. At least three of those deaths were redshirts, not that that matters. But when you've got a mix of both human and alien survivors, there's going to be fireworks. Pretty bleak picture of human behavior.